Hunting the VA Slayer

by C. M. Wendelboe

  “An old friend,” Ethan said. “He used to be in counseling after he came back from Iraq and after moving to Cheyenne. He and I were stationed at Ft. Sill for a time, and I told him what a decent place this was. That folks here needed traveling veterinarians. He had a hell of a time before I helped him down the straight and narrow and got him into college. And later, veterinarian school.”

  “Seth Barnes?”

  Ethan nodded. “I didn’t use the Xylazine but a couple times. Didn’t need to. The stun was usually enough to put my man down and out long enough to give him the dose.”

  “That you gave in their veins and covered the injection site up with a Band-Aid?” Arn said, his thoughts clearing even though his coordination was still worse than a drunken weekend sailor.

  Ethan laughed. “Pretty shrewd, don’t cha think? Making it look like the old farts had just had a blood draw.”

  “And the ones under the tongue?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Dudes get old… sometime it’s hard to find a vein in the spur of the moment. When I had a man with collapsed veins, I simply injected under the tongue. Which I believe I will do to you.”

  “Now you’re going to kill me?”

  Ethan nodded. “You do have a grasp on your imminent future.”

  “That’ll still leave Ana Maria—.”

  “No, it won’t.” He tapped his shirt pocket. “I have enough coke here to kill you both many times over. And when your friend, Chief Oblanski, finds you and Ana Maria together in a remote part of the VA with needles stuck in your arms, he’ll just assume you two had your own private party.”

  Ethan stood and set the gun on the lumber pile as he dug into his shirt pocket to retrieve the syringe. He took the cap off the needle and pushed lightly on the plunger. “Took me a while to learn how to liquify this from the powder, but you might say I perfected it thanks to YouTube. He stepped toward Arn. “Say goodnight, Mr. Anderson.”

  Arn tried scooting back. HHe hit the wall. His hand groped in the dim light for something, anything that would be a weapon, his arm falling limp, useless to the floor.

  Was that genuine sadness etched on Ethan’s face as he advanced?

  The Xylazine. Tranquilizer. Skewing my mind. Imagining things. Imagining… a figure that threw himself over the pile of lumber and crashed into Ethan. The syringe dropped on the floor, rolling away as…

  Ethan fumbled for the coke-filled syringe as he turned into the figure…

  …too late. Danny—the hypodermic filled with Xylazine in his hand—impaled Ethan’s neck with the needle, and pushed the plunger home.

  Ethan backhanded Danny and he toppled over the lumber.

  Arn groped for the syringe of cocaine Ethan had dropped, but he kicked Arn in the side, and he fell back against the wall.

  Ethan clawed at the syringe dangling from his neck and jerked it out. He looked at Danny with an animal rage in his eyes. “You little bastard,” he said looking for the gun in the dark. Failing to find it, he grabbed an old, worn Barlow knife from his pocket and opened a blade as he advanced on Danny. Steps slowing. Slower. Legs buckling. Ethan slashed the air with the blade, when he fell to the floor, a dazed and glassy look washing over his eyes as he lay immobile on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Danny crawled back across the pile of lumber and kicked Ethan’s syringe of coke away before grabbing Arn’s gun form the pile of lumber. He pointed it at Ethan, but the gun was unnecessary—Ethan wouldn’t be moving on his own any time soon.

  Danny crawled to Arn and eased him flat onto the floor.

  “What the hell…”

  “Just lay there,” Danny said as he tucked Arn’s gun into his waistband. He looked at Ethan lying semi-conscious a few feet away. “I shot him in the neck with the stuff he intended shooting you up with. Horse tranquilizer if Ana Mari is correct.”

  “Ana Maria…”

  Danny kept his hand on Arn’s shoulder, talking quietly. “She’s all right, I untied the rag long enough for her to tell me what was going on.”

  Arn rubbed his head, only slightly less foggy than before, and turned his head to look at Ethan.

  “Looks like Ethan got just enough horse tranquilizer to make him drowsy,” Danny kicked Ethan’s leg. “This ought to keep him out at least long enough for Oblanski’s men to find us.”

  “But Ana Maria…”

  “I said she’s fine.” Danny punched numbers in his trac phone. “And you will be, too, as soon as the paramedics arrive.”

  48

  ARN FOLLOWED CHIEF OBLANSKI INTO the interview room just as Mike the Mauler was beginning to start the interview. “Take a break from this one,” Oblanski told him. “This is more a debriefing than an interrogation.” He smiled at her. “I think Ana Maria’s going to be a cooperative one.”

  “I hope to shout.” Ana Maria rubbed gauze wrapped around her wrists covering the cuts from the zip ties. Bruising on each cheek showing where Ethan had tied the sheet tightly around her mouth that her makeup didn’t quite hide, and a bruise showed on the side of her neck where he had stunned her.

  “I tried to call you,” Ana Maria told Arn.

  “When?”

  “After I finished interviewing Ethan. He caught up with me in the parking lot and wondered if I wanted to catch brunch before he flew out. While we were driving to the Village Inn, I got a call from Mary Ann in Custer. She’d remembered that Bo’s middle name was Ames. I guess Ethan saw there was something wrong after I hung up and pulled into the park beside the Big Boy locomotive. I wasn’t going to break down, but something about his threats to OD me on coke loosened my tongue.”

  Arn hit the table and pain shot up his arm from the injection site. “How could I have missed Ethan?” Arn said. “The running habit. A lover of horses. He even counseled Seth Barnes and later got the tranquilizer from him. Remember I said Seth refused to dime off his friend because he helped him and was a good listener? Who better to listen than a therapist?

  “And some… simple things he said. Military verbiage: affirmative. Negative. Referred to a restroom as a head. Like he was used to talking that way. Like he’d been used to answering others in that manner, yet when I first met him, he denied being prior military. That alone should have set off red flags.”

  “I’m as much at fault,” Wagner said. “I put off checking those enlistment files from Sheridan, and just a few hours ago got a photo of Ethan Allan Randall in my inbox. It showed a heavy-set kid of eighteen, but it was Ethan all right.

  “And the dates… when I managed to cross reference them, all your suspects were at most of the VAs—Samantha and Winger. Jonah with his goofy bunch protesting. Blinded me to even consider other suspects.”

  “Speaking of Jonah Barb,” Arn said. “What theories do you have as to his murder, Ned?”

  Oblanski sipped on a Diet Coke. “Nothing that will hold water. Whoever killed him—I’m betting that Doc Henry did—strangled him with a belt and stuffed him in that culvert a week ago. Why he kept sending threatening emails and the cat and slashed tires to Ana Maria making it appear as if Jonah was responsible makes no sense. Does it to you?”

  Ana Maria shook her head. “None. Except I’ll still have to look over my shoulder for him.”

  “No leads on Doc?’ Arn asked.

  “Not yet. He never gave a notice at Mimi’s. Just one night when he was supposed to cook, he just never showed. We went to his apartment he rented on the south side, and everything was still there except his computer.”eHH

  Someone knocked on the interview room door and Wagner answered it. Danny came in with paper plates and forks and a lemon meringue pie. “Figured we’d need some comfort food while we talk about how we ever missed Ethan.”

  When Danny laid a piece of pie in front of Oblanski, he paused. “I recall that last pie you made—.”

  “I didn’t make this one,” Da
nny said. “Didn’t have time. Bought it ready-made from Shari’s Pies.”

  Ana Maria nudged him. “With what you did last night, you deserve to take a break.”

  Danny rubbed his shoulder. “Don’t have much choice. That Ethan is one strong SOB. When he tossed me over that the pile of lumber, I hit so hard I’m surprised I didn’t break a shoulder.”

  “I bet you’re glad that Xylazine you shot into Ethan took effect when it did,” Arn said. “I know I am.”

  Danny passed out forks and napkins and sat at the small interrogation table. “I didn’t know how much tranquilizer was left, or how much of a dose you got. When I untied Ana Maria’s gag, she said you had knocked the needle and syringe away just as Ethan was injecting you before you ran off. She figured you didn’t receive a full dose.”

  “All I know is that I’m grateful you were as sneaky as you were,” Ana Maria said.

  Danny shrugged. “There are some things I remember from ’Nam—like putting the sneak on an enemy.”

  Oblanski cautiously bit into the first piece, and a smile crossed his face. “I’m assuming there’ll be a special TV presentation on all this,” he asked Ana Maria.

  She nodded and dabbed at her bruised mouth with a napkin. “DeAngelo said that—after he spent a fortune on Arn’s trip to Seattle, not to mention reimbursing him for the charter flight back—there had better be something special. He agreed to an hour-long presentation, which is unheard of here.”

  “I’m hoping you leave out Winger and Samantha’s non-involvement in the events,” Arn said.

  “Have you been brave enough to get hold of her?” Oblanski asked. “Hard to let a looker like that get away.”

  Arn finished his pie in three bites. He was famished after being monitored at the hospital all night form the effects of the Xylazine. In the room right next to Ethan. “I’ve left three messages with her secretary here and one each at Hot Springs and Sheridan. She hasn’t returned my calls, and I’m not holding my breath she will.” Arn shook his head. “Only one to blame is myself. If I hadn’t suspected her—.”

  “You weren’t alone,” Ana Maria said and turned to Oblanski. “When Arn brought up the possibility of two killers—one gruesome and sloppy, the other one meticulous—even I thought Sam might be a suspect, working with Pudgy. Especially when we discussed brother-sister serial killers, and what a beauty his sister was, though we had no pics. So when I saw Seth Barnes and Sam at dinner… I guess my suspicions got the better of me.”

  “I will graciously make it a point to meet with her,” Oblanski said. “Tell her the reasons she was suspected. As I’ll do with Winger Hayes.”

  “You gonna meet with Winger?” Wagner said. “Now what’s he done?”

  “It’s what he hasn’t done,” Oblanski said. “When it looked like it was Winger’s wrench that tried caving Arn’s head in, The Mauler brought Winger in for interrogation. Damned near had him in tears. I think I owe him an explanation just to ease his mind that we’re not bringing him back for round two with The Mauler.”

  “I’m just thankful all this is over,” Ana Maria said. “Now I can go home and crash for about a week.”

  “Just make sure your house alarm is armed,” Oblanski said. “Doc Henry’s still out there. Somewhere.”

  —

  The Mauler came out for a moment to get fresh coffee for the stenographer and two officers guarding him as well as for Ethan. Oblanski stared through the one-way glass into the interrogation. “He said this was the easiest interrogation he’d ever had. And the lengthiest. The Mauler figures this will clear up all the veteran-deaths here and in Wyoming and South Dakota.”

  Arn turned the volume up. “Now let’s get to this sixth retired military officer,” The Mauler asked. “When did you first make contact with him and…?

  Arn flipped the volume control off. “Has Ethan said anything we don’t already know?”

  Oblanski looked at hen scratchings on a legal pad in front of him. “Hard to keep track, but Ethan confirmed much of what we already knew: he targeted officers because his father hated them and passed that hatred off to his son. He freely admitted he would have killed his mother to prevent us from discovering his identity if he would have known her address. But by the time he found her address in Seattle, the house was empty, and he searched for her since. That’s what he intended doing when he lured you to the VA and had that syringe of Xylazine—get you doped up enough where you’d tell him Beth’s address and not even care if you did.”

  “Did he come clean with attacking me?”

  “He did,” Oblanski answered, his arms crossed, watching the casual way in which Ethan answered The Mauler’s questions. “He laughed about it, until he became serious and said he should have finished the job. As far as the tools, he stole the crescent wrench from Winger’s toolbox hoping to set him up. Or set up Samantha as they have the same initials.”

  “Guess Ethan didn’t know Sam is a Snap-On tool gal.”

  “Apparently,” Oblanski said. “He said his secretary had learned from the ‘gossip pool of secretaries’ as he put it that Samantha and you were to go to dinner that night at Outback, and he let the air out of her tires right before she left her apartment the VA provides for her. ‘I felt sorry for Anderson’ he said, ‘that Sam wasn’t there to meet him So I did’, and he laughed his fool head off.”

  Oblanski flipped the volume switch again. “Sure, I ran away from the old man when I was sixteen,” Ethan said, and the stenographer tapped on her key machine. “Went to work at a ranch by Dayton until I turned eighteen—old enough to enlist there at the Army recruiting office in Sheridan. I was always going to come home and prod the old man. Wear my uniform. Maybe tell him I wanted to get into OCS. Become an officer. Just to piss him off.” Ethan laughed. “Except before I went home on leave, he’d hung himself. Guess the damned officers finally pushed him over the edge.”

  Oblanski turned down the volume. “He also owned Brian Gibbs’ murder. Ethan stopped at the Legion right after you left and had a beer with Brian Gibbs. He told him how you’d been in there looking for information, and he was worried that Gibbs might eventually get around to mentioning that Ethan was an ex-Ranger. ‘Couldn’t have that,’ he told us. ‘Someone might get around to looking for a former serviceman. And eventually narrow the search down further if they were looking for a Ranger,” and he killed Gibbs after he locked the Legion up for the night.”

  “And he tossed the colonel wings beside the body?’ Arn asked. “Another thing I should have picked up on. That single colonel wing left beside Gibbs’ body was bright. Shiny. Not like a pair that had been worn extensively during protests.”

  “I missed it, too,” Oblanski said and turned up the speaker volume to the interrogation room.

  The Mauler wrapped up his interview, the guards walking towards Ethan, the stenographer packing up her machine. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Ethan held up his hands as if in surrender. “No sense to lie. Besides, all this won’t make a whit of difference. I’m crazy, don’t you know.”

  “How so?” The Mauler asked.

  “What sane man would kill military officers over something as flimsy as what his old man taught him? What judge won’t look at my psych eval—whenever you get around to sending me to Evanston to see the state shrinks—and the ease with which I’m relating in all the details the deaths of my… victims and not determine I am a raving lunatic that deserves being locked up in your state mental institution.”

  “If I didn’t know better,” The Mauler said, “I’d say you’re planning on gaming the system.”

  “Me?” Ethan feigned a hurt look as he held one hand over his heart. “Not hardly. But,” he paused while the guards unchained him from the ring in the floor, “with the proper mental health treatment I could get better. Might heal enough that the shrinks in Evanston pronounce me… cured. If that happens,
I’ll get released to live a normal life. To function well in society. That day comes, I might even come back here,” Ethan faced the one-way glass and cocked his finger like a mini-gun, “I might just look up my old friend Arn Anderson.

  Epilogue

  ARN PAUSED AT THE DOOR, his finger not quite touching the keypad on the house alarm before punching in the security code and arming the system. Snow had started early this year, as if often did in the high elevation of Cheyenne, and he carefully took off his wet boots before Dann-the-Clean-Nazi saw him tramping around the house.

  “Where is everybody?” he called out.

  “Sewing room,” Danny shouted back.

  As soon as Arn stepped into the room, he knew things were not right. Danny sat holding a plate with a half-eaten piece of chocolate cake, and Ana Maria sat transfixed at something in her lap. She looked up at Arn and handed him a dried and pressed white rose. “This came in the mail today.”

  “Doc,” Arn said. “The son-of-a-bitch is still around.” It had been two months since Doc had disappeared after killing Jonah Barb and Bulldog, though nothing could be directly tied to Doc. Oblanski had issued a five-state BOLO on him, and the DCI had followed up on every lead that came in to the Doc Henry Task Force tip line. There had been more Doc leads than those claiming to know where Jimmy Hoffa was panted. But thus far, all the sightings had been fruitless.

  Ana Maria handed Arn a letter. “The flower came pressed inside this.”

  Arn opened the letter and read it twice:

  Dearest Ana Maria,

  If you are wondering just where I moved to, keep wondering. Neither the local law nor the state or federal boys have laid a glove on me. And they won’t.

  Now to the meat of the reason for my writing: I need you to understand what happened that time we first met online and later in person in Denver. I did not keep you with me to harm you permanently. I did not take you from that basement—and later when we fled Denver—to cause you any pain. I took you with me to be with me. And that is the reason for those threatening emails months ago. That was the reason for warning you with that dead cat thing (though now I admit it was pretty juvenile as was slashing your tires.) I warned you because I feared for your safety with the attention it would bring upon you. There was a killer out there—and believe me, I know killers—hunting veterans at local facilities.